Redes neuronales artificiales

The evidence drawn from these brief case studies, combined with the broader considerations about the operation of the transnational legal field, clearly point to a growing role for private legal agents – and especially the corporate law firm – in shaping the making and application of law and regulation in the global economy. Neo-liberal globalization has provided new levels of autonomy and agency for private actors, especially corporations, providers of managerial and technical services to them, and other market institutions (such as capital markets). They have responded by taking the initiative in developing legal rules and standards to govern their own activities, and in shaping the rules promulgated by national states and regional and multilateral institutions to govern the globalizing economy. In this context, private providers of legal services have come to play an increasingly important role in developing rules, codes, and strategies that aid the attempts of private actors to design private and public regimes that protect and promote their perceived interests. We have seen, though, that lawyers are not just agents of clients, but play a crucial role in determining and changing the content of the law itself. Combined with the insight that legal rules embody and help reproduce structures of power and wealth, we can conclude that private lawyers are central actors in shaping the governance of the contemporary political economy.

29 In addition, I have identified three distinct paths by which private lawyers and law firms have been central in the creation and diffusion of the legal concepts, models, and practices which have helped constitute the contemporary transnational legal field. One is the primarily “private” route, exemplified by international arbitration, in which these actors reshape the ways in which autonomous forms of business dispute resolution operate and the rules that they apply. A second is a primarily public route, as shown in the case of the GATT/WTO agreements, in which private lawyers engage the power of a state or group of states (primarily the U.S. in this case) to rewrite international economic law, which then becomes the model to which other states must conform their own domestic laws, as in the area of intellectual property. The third is a more “mixed” route, in which private legal actors from the U.S. worked to transform the legal conceptions and norms in business practice in Europe, and thus helped prepare the ground for reforms in European public law adapted to these practices. We can see this kind of process operating in legal reforms in such areas as contract interpretation, regulatory policy, and competition policy. Each of these paths helps us gain a deeper understanding of the way the transnational legal field works, and through this a better sense of the evolving relationships between states and markets in the global political economy.

These findings, though supported by the theoretical models I have tried to elaborate, remain tentative suggestions as much as firm conclusions. In order to evaluate them in more detail, we need more research on the following topics:

•= What is the nature of the relationship between corporate law firms and multinational corporations? How exactly do the former help shape the strategic behavior of firms, and how are do they translate corporate needs and interests into legal rules and norms? At present, the literature on these questions is just too thin. Focused and detailed case studies in particular areas of law will be required to flesh out this relationship.

•= How involved are corporate lawyers and law firms in shaping the behavior of public actors on the transnational level? We know that there are close connections between these firms and those who work for states and international organizations, and there is anectodal evidence that ideas and influence flow from law firms to public actors through these connections. Again, we need more focused case studies – such as the ones pursued by Sell – to move beyond the anectodal level. In particular, we do not yet know much

30 about the role of private legal actors in the many bi-lateral processes, such as that between the U.S. and the EU, in which the processes of regulatory harmonization or mutual recognition take place (but see Shaffer, 2001)

•= Do global law firms systematically promote models of law derived from the legal traditions of their home countries? There is some evidence that this is the case with U.S. and U.K. firms, and that they are often hired for precisely this expertise. Beyond the competition for business between these two legal communities, does the choice of U.S. as opposed to U.K. (or continental civil law models) really matter much for the distribution of power and wealth? Does the current power of the common law tradition in the transnational field have a distinctive impact on the governance of the global economy. In other words, how much impact do these issues of legal style and tradition have on the power of private corporate actors?

I hope that I have made the case that this kind of research is necessary for understanding the contemporary global political economy. But it is also crucial for those interested in changing current patterns of wealth and power. If transnational law and those who shape it help structure and legitimize the global political economy, we need to begin to develop ways of transforming the former if we hope to change the latter. Political actors, of course, have already recognized and acted upon this understanding. The struggles over intellectual property and investment rules surrounding the GATT/WTO treaties, and the continuing role of NGO’s and other actors in attempting to incorporate concerns for human rights, worker health and safety, the rights of women, and environmental protection into the rules of the global political economy are all based on this kind of approach, and have had a significant (if not yet transformative) impact. Indeed, as in the case of states, corporations, and law firms, actors pushing these principles have learned that they need to work on both the public and private levels to have a real impact on the governance of the global economy. But this task, and the critical work necessary to support it, is only just beginning.

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